Topic: Android

With the next-generation iPhone expected to launch in just a few months, a new supply chain report claims that Android device makers are trimming their chip orders, apparently hoping to avoid direct competition with Apple's latest model.

Despite a flurry of incessant news reports maintaining that Apple is poised to bore its customers to death with a completely snooze-worthy iPhone 7 this fall, there's actually excessive evidence providing reason to believe that the portended death of iPhone 7 has been greatly exaggerated--for reasons that should be obvious.

The weak sustainability of low-end market share has claimed a new victim. Dell has dropped its remaining Venue-branded Android tablet line and will instead focus on selling conventional PCs and hybrid "2-in-1" devices running Windows, citing over-saturation and declining demand for slate-style tablets.

Apple recently poured cold water on rumors claiming iMessage would see introduction on Google's Android platform, potentially at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference, saying the messaging service is worth more as an exclusive first-party feature.

An unconfirmed, and somewhat tenuous, rumor on Thursday claims iMessage will be Apple's next Android release, with the company potentially planning a debut next week at its Worldwide Developers Conference.

After Apple announced an upcoming change to its App Store revenue sharing policies that will net developers a larger cut for customers who maintain a subscription for more than one year, a report now says Google plans to offer identical terms -- minus the probationary period.

Rather than focusing on the incremental innovation needed to win back the attention of enterprise users and premium consumers, Google's vision for Android this year has again leapt in new directions which appear even less attainable. Android's scattered, imitative strategies du jour are resulting in a platform that looks a lot like Apple's--albeit the very unsuccessful Apple of the mid 90s.

Google's Android installed base has long suffered a major problem with fragmentation at the OS API level, due to the fact that licensees continue shipping low end phones paired with old versions of Android. Here's what the company is ostensibly doing to address that in a new project introduced at its I/O 2016 conference: Instant Apps.

Over the last year, the pace of Google's Android deployment, already very slow, actually rolled backward by 20 percent over the previous year. Google is leading Android and Chrome toward stagnant beleaguerment.

Google's forthcoming Daydream platform for virtual reality has support from Android device makers including Samsung, HTC, LG, and Huawei, though the hardware is predicted to only be "slightly better" than Samsung's own Gear VR.

At the beginning of its I/O developer conference on Wednesday, Google revealed that the next major version of Android -- codenamed "Android N" -- is launching in beta later today, and will introduce features like better performance, improved multitasking, and even virtual reality support when it officially arrives in late summer.

Android phones continued to see the most devices failures in the first quarter of 2016, although the gap with iPhones shrunk hugely quarter-to-quarter, according to a research study published on Wednesday.